When You Don’t Need Data

Today, our portfolio company Very Good Security (VGS) announced a Series B led by Goldman Sachs’ Merchant Banking Division. We are incredibly proud of the VGS team’s progress and the product they’ve built since we initially partnered with them in 2016. We invested in VGS’s idea that businesses should be able to operate on sensitive data without holding the data themselves and are thrilled to see that idea become a reality for so many lucky VGS customers.

What VGS has created is significant for a hundred reasons. One of those reasons is particularly notable as we (society) continue through what I will gently call privacy negotiations. Businesses want the right to operate with data freely, and consumers want to use the internet without compromising their privacy. There is a lot of legislation going into place to try and protect the consumer when the fact remains that businesses need to operate with sensitive data.

VGS is the first company to make sensitive data operational without compromising consumer privacy.

When someone asks you for a key, it is not because they need that key, they need the function the key enables. When a company asks you for your data, it does not really need your personal information; the company needs the ability to ship you a package, differentiate you from another customer, check your credit score, or process your payment. For the company, storing all of this sensitive data needlessly increases the complexity of their systems.

Consider this nuance when you are making a request for information or when you are fighting vigilantly for your privacy. Let’s build smarter.